Murder Most Merry (42 page)

“I’ll have to think it over.” Ballard was flattered but cautious. “One does have certain principles about”—he gulped, rather in the manner of a fish struggling with its conscience—”encouraging the publication of explicitly sexual material.”

“Think it over, Mr. Ballard. I’ll be in touch with your clerk.” And then, as Naismith saw me approach, he said, “Perhaps I’ll have a word with him now.” So this legal Santa Claus moved away in the general direction of Henry and once more Rumpole was left with nothing in his stocking.

“By the way,” I asked Ballard, “did you invite that extremely smooth solicitor?”

“No. I think Henry did.” Our Head of Chambers spoke as a man whose thoughts are on knottier problems. “Charming chap, though, isn’t he?”

Later in the course of the party I found myself next to Henry. “Good work inviting Mr. Daintry Naismith,” I said to our clerk. “He seems set on providing briefs for everyone except me.”

“I don’t really know the gentleman,” Henry admitted. “I think he must be a friend of Mr. Ballard’s. Of course, we hope to see a lot of him in the future.”

Much later, in search of a small cigar, I remembered the box, still in its special Christmas reindeer-patterned wrapping, that I had left in my brief tray. I opened the door of the clerk’s room and found the lights off and Henry’s desk palely lit by the old gas lamp outside in Equity Court.

There was a dark-suited figure standing beside the desk who seemed to be trying the locked drawers rather in the casual way that suspicious-looking youths test car handles. I switched on the light and found myself staring at our star solicitor guest. And as I looked at him, the years rolled away and I was in Court defending a bent house agent. Beside him in the dock had been an equally curved solicitor’s clerk who had joined my client as a guest of Her Majesty.

“Derek Newton,” I said, “Inner London Sessions. Raising mortgages on deserted houses that you didn’t own. Two years.”

“I knew you’d recognize me. Mr. Rumpole. Sooner or later.”

“What the hell do you think you are doing?”

“I’m afraid—well, barristers’ chambers are about the only place where you can find a bit of petty cash lying about at Christmas.” The man seemed resolved to have no secrets from Rumpole.

“You admit it?”

“Things aren’t too easy when you’re knocking sixty, and the business world’s full of wide boys up to all the tricks. You can’t get far on one good suit and the Old Etonian tie nowadays. You always defend, don’t you, Rumpole? That’s what I’ve heard. Well, I can only appeal to you for leniency.”

“But coming to our party,” I said, staggered by this most confident of tricksters, “promising briefs to all the learned friends—”

“I always wanted to be admitted as a solicitor.” He smiled a little wistfully. “I usually walk through the Temple at Christmastime. Sometimes I drop in to the parties. And I always make a point of offering work. It’s a pleasure to see so many grateful faces. This is, after all, Mr. Rumpole, the season of giving.”

What could I do? All he had got out of us, after all, was a couple of glasses of Pommeroy’s Fleet Street white; that and the five-pound note he “borrowed” from me for his cab fare home. I went back to the party and explained to Ballard that Mr. Daintry Naismith had made a phone call and had to leave on urgent business.

“He’s offered me a highly remunerative brief, Rumpole, defending a publisher of dubious books. It’s against my principles, but even the greatest sinner has a right to have his case put before the Court.”

“And put by your golden tongue, old darling,” I flattered him. “If you take my advice, you’ll go for it.”

It was, after all, the season of goodwill, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to spoil Soapy Sam Ballard’s Christmas.

THE SPY AND THE CHRISTMAS CIPHER – Edward D. Hoch

It was just a few days before the Christmas recess at the University of Reading when Rand’s wife Leila said to him over dinner, “Come and speak to my class on Wednesday, Jeffrey.”

“What? Are you serious?” He put down his fork and stared at her. “I know nothing about archaeology.”

“You don’t have to. I just want you to tell them a Christmas story of some sort. Remember last year? The Canadian writer Robertson Davies was over here on a visit and he told one of his ghost stories.”

“I don’t know any good ghost stories.”

“Then tell them a cipher story from before you retired. Tell them about the time you worked through Christmas Eve trying to crack the St. Ives cipher.”

Ivan St. Ives. Rand hadn’t thought of him in years.

Yes, he supposed it was a Christmas story of sorts.

It was Christmas Eve morning in 1974, when Rand was still head of Concealed Communications, operating out of the big old building overlooking the Thames. He remembered his superior, Hastings, making the rounds of the offices with an open bottle of sherry and a stack of paper cups, a tradition that no one but Hastings ever looked forward to. A cup of government sherry before noon was not something to warm the heart or put one in the Christmas spirit.

“It promises to be a quiet day,” Hastings said, pouring the ritual drink. “You should be able to leave early and finish up your Christmas shopping.”

“It’s finished. I have no one but Leila to buy for.” Rand accepted the cup and took a small sip.

“Sometimes I wish I was as well organized as you, Rand.” Hastings seemed almost disappointed as he sat down in the worn leather chair opposite Rand’s desk. “I was going to ask you to pick up something for me.”

“On the day before Christmas? The stores will be crowded.”

Hastings decided to abandon the pretense. “They say Ivan St. Ives is back in town.”

“Oh? Surely you weren’t planning to send him a Christmas gift?”

St. Ives was a double agent who’d worked for the British, the Russians, and anyone else willing to pay his price. There were too many like him in the modern world of espionage, where national loyalties counted for nothing against the lure of easy money.

“He’s back in town and he’s not working for us.”

“Who, then?” Rand asked. “The Russians?”

“Perkins and Simplex, actually.”

“Perkins and Simplex is a department store.”

“Exactly. Ivan St. Ives has been employed over the Christmas season as their Father Christmas—red suit, white beard, and all. He holds little children on his knee and asks them what they want for Christmas.”

Rand laughed. “Is the spying business in some sort of depression we don’t know about? St. Ives could always pick up money from the Irish if nobody else would pay him.”

“I just found out about it last evening, almost by accident. I ran into St. Ives’s old girlfriend. Daphne Sollis, at the Crown and Piper. There’s no love lost between the two of them and she was quite eager to tell me of his hard times.”

“It’s one of his ruses, Hastings. If Ivan St. Ives is sitting in Perkins and Simplex wearing a red suit and a beard it’s part of some much more complex scheme.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, this is his last day on the job. Why don’t you drop by and take a look for yourself?”

“Is that what this business about last-minute shopping has been leading up to? What about young Parkinson—isn’t this more his sort of errand?”

“Parkinson doesn’t know St. Ives. You do.”

There was no disputing the logic of that. Rand drank the rest of his sherry and stood up. “Do I have to sit on his lap?”

Hastings sighed. “Just find out what he’s up to, Jeff.”

The day was unseasonably warm, and as Rand crossed Oxford Street toward the main entrance of Perkins and Simplex he was aware that many in the lunchtime crowd had shed their coats or left them back at the office. The department store itself was a big old building that covered an entire block facing Oxford Street. It dated from Edwardian times, prior to World War I, and was a true relic of its age. Great care had been taken to maintain the exterior just as it had been, though the demands of modern merchandising had taken their toll with the interior. During the previous decade the first two floors had been gutted and transformed into a pseudo-atrium, surrounded by a balcony on which some of the store’s regular departments had become little shops. The ceiling was frosted glass, lit from above by fluorescent tubes to give the appearance of daylight.

It was in this main atrium, near the escalators, that Father Christmas had been installed on his throne amidst sparkly white mountains of ersatz snow that was hardly in keeping with the outdoor temperature. The man himself was stout, but not as fat as American Santa Clauses. His white beard and the white-trimmed cowl of his red robe effectively hid his identity. It might have been Ivan St. Ives, but Rand wasn’t prepared to swear to it. He had to get much closer if he wanted to be sure.

He watched for a time from the terrace level as a line of parents and tots wound its way up the carpeted ramp to Father Christmas’s chair. There he listened carefully to each child’s request, sometimes boosting the smallest of them to his knee and patting their heads, handing each one a small brightly wrapped gift box from a pile at his elbow.

After observing this for ten or fifteen minutes, Rand descended to the main floor and found a young mother approaching the end of the line with her little boy. “Pardon me. ma’am,” Rand said. “I wonder if I might borrow your son and take him up to see Father Christmas.”

She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. ‘No. I can take him myself.”

Rand showed his identity card. “It’s official business.”

The woman hesitated, then stood firm. “I’m sorry. Roger would be terrified if I left him.”

“Could I come along, then, as your husband?”

She stared at the card again, as if memorizing the name. “I suppose so, if it’s official business. No violence or anything, though?”

“I promise.”

They stood in line together and Rand took the little boy’s hand. Roger stared up at him with his big brown eyes, but his mother was there to give him confidence. “I hate shopping on Christmas Eve,” she told Rand. “I always spend too much when I wait until the last minute.”

“I think most of us do that.” He smiled at the boy. “Are you ready, Roger? We’re getting closer to Father Christmas.”

In a moment the boy was on the bearded man’s knee, having his head patted as he told him what he wanted to find under the tree next day. Then he received his brightly wrapped gift box and they were on their way back down the ramp.

“Thank you,” Rand told the woman. “You’ve been a big help.” He went back up to the terrace level and spent the next hour watching Ivan St. Ives. double agent, passing out gifts to a long line of little children.

“It’s St. Ives,” Rand told Hastings when he returned to the office. “No doubt of it.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“I doubt it.” He explained how he’d accompanied himself with the woman and child. “If he did, he might have assumed I was with my family.”

“So he’s just making a little extra Christmas money?”

“I’m afraid it’s more than that.”

“You spotted something.”

“A great deal, but I don’t know what it means. I watched him for more than an hour in all. After he listened to each child, he handed them a small gift. I watched one little girl opening hers. It was a clear plastic ball to hang on a Christmas tree, with figures of cartoon characters inside.”

“Seems harmless enough.”

“I’m sure the store wouldn’t be giving out anything that wasn’t. The trouble is, while I watched him I noticed a slight deviation from his routine on three different occasions. In these cases, he chose the gift box from a separate pile, and handed it to the parent rather than the child.”

“Well, some of the children are quite small, I imagine.”

“In those three cases, none of the boxes were opened in the store. They were stowed away in shopping bags by the mother or father. One little boy started crying for his gift, but he didn’t get it.”

Hastings thought about it.

“Do you think an agent would take a position as a department store Father Christmas to distribute some sort of message to his network?”

“I think we should see one of those boxes, Hastings.”

“If there
is
a message, it probably says ‘Merry Christmas. ‘ “